Estimated reading time: 5 minutes<\/p>\n
EEUU. In May of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin played host to Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in the Grand Kremlin Palace, just ahead of major celebrations in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n
It was a symbolic moment that showcased Putin\u2019s main alliance in the Western Hemisphere. Flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Putin offered warm words of welcome for his Venezuelan counterpart, saying ties between Moscow and Caracas were developing \u201cthanks in large part to the personal attention\u201d of Maduro.<\/p>\n
Following restricted-format talks and an official breakfast, the two presidents went on to sign a treaty on strategic partnership and cooperation. But the capture of Maduro in a military operation ordered by US President Donald Trump has exposed the limits of that partnership \u2013 while pointing the way for potential strategic opportunities for the Kremlin leader when it comes to dealing with Washington\u2019s new era of gunboat diplomacy.<\/p>\n
Condemnation by Russian diplomats of the US raid to capture Maduro, of course, was swift and unequivocal. In a weekend phone call to Venezuela\u2019s Executive Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, now interim president, Lavrov \u201cexpressed strong solidarity with the people of Venezuela in the face of armed aggression,\u201d according to a readout provided by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n
What we know about the US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker<\/p>\n
Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya accused Washington of \u201cgenerating fresh momentum for neocolonialism and for imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the voice of Putin \u2013 the only person who really matters in Russian politics \u2013 was notably absent in the immediate aftermath of the US regime-change operation. Unlike his Chinese President Xi Jinping, who condemned what he called \u201cunilateral bullying\u201d by Washington, Putin did not make an immediate and clear public statement about the raid.<\/p>\n
Likewise, he has not yet commented on the boarding and seizure of a Russian-flagged vessel by US forces Wednesday. Many observers are now wondering how Moscow will respond to Washington\u2019s new military adventurism.<\/p>\n
US European Command<\/p>\n
At first blush, Maduro\u2019s ouster does appear to be the latest in a series of geopolitical setbacks for Putin. In December 2024, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime client of Moscow, fled to Russia after the collapse of his regime. Last June, the US launched strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, directly entering a conflict with a country that had also entered into a strategic partnership with Russia earlier in the year.<\/p>\n
Russian officials were quick to clarify that the strategic partnership between Moscow and Tehran did not oblige Russia to intervene militarily if Iran were attacked. And while the strategic partnership forged between Maduro and Putin was billed by the Russian government as an expression of support to \u201cthe fraternal Venezuelan people\u201d in defending against external threats, the incursion by US special-operations forces triggered no muscular response from Moscow.<\/p>\n
The raid by US forces to seize Maduro was also a bit of embarrassing publicity for Russia\u2019s military-industrial complex. Under Maduro\u2019s predecessor, the late President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, Venezuela\u2019s conventional armed forces began retooling with Russian-made equipment, including the S-300, Buk and 44 Pechora air-defense systems. Amid threats of military action by the Trump administration, Maduro had also boasted that his country\u2019s military had placed 5,000 Russian-made short-range anti-aircraft missiles in \u201ckey air defense positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeems those Russian air defenses didn\u2019t quite work so well, did they?\u201d scoffed US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in remarks Monday at a naval shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.<\/p>\n
But there are potential silver linings for Putin on a strategic level. Trump\u2019s assertion of a clear sphere of interest in Latin America \u2013 the so-called \u201cDonroe Doctrine\u201d could give the Kremlin leader a bit of rhetorical top cover when it comes to justifying his own imperial quest to dismantle an independent Ukraine. And the Trump administration\u2019s confident signaling that control of Greenland is next on the to-do list neatly complements the view from the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has long asserted a right to intervene in what\u2019s referred to as the \u201cnear abroad\u201d \u2013 the independent states that emerged from the ashes of the USSR. And in remarks following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin made it very clear that he viewed restoration of empire as his supreme mission.<\/p>\n
Those remarks echo comments made in the wake of the Venezuela raid by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who told CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper that \u201cwe live in a world, in the real world \u2026 that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.\u201d<\/p>\n
This may be the real reason Trump wants Greenland<\/p>\n
And Trump\u2019s message that he is willing to use force to take Greenland \u2013 a self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally \u2013 must also be welcome news to the Kremlin. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has worked to exploit any fissures within the transatlantic alliance, particularly as the UK and European powers try to cobble together a \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d to back Ukraine with US support wavering.<\/p>\n
At a church service to mark Russian Orthodox Christmas \u2013 observed on January 7 under the Julian calendar \u2013 Putin appeared with uniformed service members and their families, publicly showing resolve to continue his war on Ukraine, despite ongoing peace efforts.<\/p>\n
Putin, center, accompanied by military personnel and their families, lights a candle while attending an Orthodox Christmas service Wednesday at a church in Russia\u2019s Moscow region.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we celebrate the wonderful, bright holiday of the Nativity of Christ. And we often call the Lord our Savior, because He came to earth to save all people,\u201d Putin said. \u201cSo, soldiers, the soldiers of Russia, always fulfil this very mission, as if commissioned by the Lord \u2013 to defend the Fatherland, to save the Motherland and its people. And at all times Russia has treated its soldiers in this way: as those people who, as if commissioned by the Lord, fulfil this sacred mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spectacle of Maduro being transported to a New York courthouse may draw inconvenient attention to Putin\u2019s failure to successfully impose regime change on neighboring Ukraine. But Putin appears to be signaling that, in the global Game of Thrones, might still makes right. (CNN)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Estimated reading time: 5 minutes EEUU. In May of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin played host to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-396149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}